Can you come up with a brief proposal for a small scaled game? Perhaps requiring three or so artists, one or two programmers, and yourself. I'm sure we can drum enough support to get something happening if people understand the kind of project that this team is veering in.

Premise

The player is in charge of (a character?) making hamburgers for a hamburger store.

High Concept

This is a columns-like puzzle game. Instead of matching groups of specific gems, the player stacks games in a specific order. The gems are based around the idea of the main character making hamburgers.

Gameplay

During game play, the player will move, rotate and drop groups of gems into the playing well. To clear gems out of the well and score points, the player has to stack the gems in various orders (bun – beef – bun, bun – beef – cheese – bun, bun – beef – cheese – tomato – lettuce – bun, etc). The more complex the stack, the higher the score, but there will also be a set limit of how high the stack can be.

There will be a story mode and a free play mode. The story mode will also act as a tutorial. Playing the story mode, the player will have to make a certain number of burgers each level. Each successive level will unlock another gem the player can use to make burger stacks. It will culminate in a level that has all the gems unlocked and never ends. This final level is also how the free play mode will work.

In total there will be six different gems; Bun(yellow), Beef(Brown), Cheese(orange), tomato(red), lettuce(green) and onion(white).

One thing I have to ask, is how are iPhone emulators? I know I don't own or have access to the actual hardware and I'm sure there would be others that don't either.

Having said that I feel that platform doesn't really matter too much and we should be open to changing the platform according to the coders' preference.

Also, if we do pick a platform that can do 3D, why not let it use 3D assets, but leave the gameplay tied to a normal 2D grid?

I don't have much experience in group sizes or project timelines, but I could see this project being done in 4-5 months with 2 coders, 3-4 artists and 1 audio person. From my point of view the game will be fairly easy to program, but there's the possibility of it needing a lot of art.

You know what im already in team A working with Bittmans team but i like the concept and look if you need an artist id be more than happy to contribute, as long as there isnt a rule against working in more than one team souri???

Yeh, it seems all the artists that have put their hand up here are 3D artists, so that might be the plan. It might be pre-rendered in 3D and handled in 2D if needed (see Torque 2D).

The idea to publish on the iPhone was to get some monetary returns on the game, but if anyone knows any other avenues for revenue, please do suggest it. I understand that it might not be a lot, but if it's worth doing, then it's worth getting some return.

The Unity 3D engine is coming out for the PC which can export to the iPhone, or we could use Torque 2D iPhone instead. The licenses are a bit expensive, so maybe a dual boot solution could suffice for the programmer. I guess we can leave that up to whoever volunteers to program this, but what do you guys think.

You're just what we needed to get this project going. What platform are you most happy to develop for? The brief game design docs are in this thread, so you could probably suss out what you need to do and what's required from the artists. You can talk to Charcoal if you need to clear anything up.

I was thinking, if Cad can do one simple cute 3D chef character as part of the presentation (for use in opening screen, menu etc) in a stylish vein, for example the characters in My Sims, that would be awesome (would be great to provide some brief animations too)

Plusie and Raymondl, perhaps one of you would do the burger assets (which shouldn't be too hard), and maybe both of you can come up with background designs for levels? They'd be simple colourful 3D designs of maybe the burger store, kitchen, or food etc, reated stuff like that. For style, I was thinking of the stuff like in My Sims as well.

Anyway, they're just some of my suggestions - they might not be what Charcoal intended. Charcoal, post about what those guys can do with the goals you had in mind.

I just checked out the My Sims stuff, it seems nice. If we use that as a base for our art style, I don't think we would be going too wrong.

The distribution of people that you have put down seems to be good.

Cad: If it's not too much, I think having (at least) two characters would be best, male and female.

Plusie and Raymondl: For backgrounds I'm thinking that some simple ones, based on locations (kitchen, burger store, American diner) would be good. For this project, I don't like the idea of a kind of abstract backgrounds.
I've laid out what colours I think the gems should be in the proposal. I need you guys to come up with very distinctive shapes for each of them. For puzzle games, the gems need to be distinctive in both colour and shape. Puzzle Quest's Gems are good in this area, both the borders of non-mana gems and the internals art of all of gems.

The first release of the game should definatley be on Windows, since it's easy to develop for and the most commonly used. I'm happy developing in C++. I generally build my games on top of SDL and OpenGL. These libraries are supported on Mac and Linux, so porting to these platforms shouldn't be too much trouble. Porting to a handheld device is going to require a fair bit of engine work though.

Just so you know I don't have too much 3D programming experience. I can load a textured, shaded 3D model/scene, however I haven't done anything with 3D animation or shaders. We probably wouldn't want to make thing too 3D intensive as this type of game is targeted at a casual gamer who wouldn't necassarily have a dedicated graphics card and a modern computer.

What I need from Charcoal is the core gameplay designed. Once thats done I should be able to get a playable prototype up in a couple weeks.

I'm part of the team over at Aberrant Entertainment (http://www.aberrant.com.au), we've been around for a few years and used to be known as Gridwerx. After Gridwerx disbanded we jumped into developing casual games. I just thought I'd give you some pointers on the industry.

Your idea has a very interesting and cool game play style. If you have the artwork to match, it will be a very cool game. However, casual gamers are evolving and aren't really looking just to kill time anymore. They do it for reward. For example, there has been a big push in games where you complete a level and get rewarded with a motivation that doesn't really affect gameplay. My suggestion here would be, you complete a section of levels (maybe 5) and get rewarded with a "franchise" in another city or something along those lines. These don't have to necessarily do something, but gives the player something to aim for. I would bring up a map, or even a world globe and allow the player to choose where they want to open their franchise, and as you progress through the game keep track of where the player has opened up, maybe even do something clever with your points, make it "x million served worldwide", instead of just ordinary points.

For distribution options, hit up every major portal when you finish the game. Build yourselves a promo website for the game, and just email them the link with a brief description. It is important that you saturate it across multiple distributors. This way you will get someone either that takes it, or gives you pointers on how to improve. And not to mention these guys can take their sweet time to do a reply. Don't go for the retail market either, it is too hard to get into with these sorts of games. Online distribution is god.

For game testing, advice and feedback. Utilise the internet, tSumea will be a great resource when you get to this stage, but there are plenty of other forums etc. where people will want to play new games. And use local resources, at Aberrant we are based out of Brisbane, so when we wanted to test our game we approached local unis / tafes who have game development courses, such as QUT & Qantm and asked if we could do gameplay test sessions and deliver a free lecture afterwards about our experience so far.

Yeh, the 3D stuff I would think would be pre-rendered stuff rather than realtime.

Anyway, did you look at the design doc? Got any questions for Charcoal? Can you come up with some specs and needs for the art team? What sort of screen size / resolution are we looking at for this game?

Having recently run out of money to continue my study of games and interactivity at swinburn i was wondering if there was any need for another 3D artist/animator on this project. Im finding i have a lot of time on my hands at the moment and Im pretty anxious to fill it with something constructive.

We already have 3 artists on board with their duties assigned to them. I know CAD and Raymondl are already working on stuff, and we haven't heard from Plusie for a while now. If he drops out, you're more than free to take his spot.

Otherwise, post your interest in Team C, and hopefully we can get a project happening there real soon.

Is this still active? and if yes I would also be available for helping on the 3d side.
I have around 10 years professional experience in especially low poly modeling texturing of characters vehicles and props.